Idaho Law Review Volume 51 | Number 1 Article 7 March 2019 Social-Ecological Resilience and Law in the Platte River Basin Hannah E. Birge, et al. Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.uidaho.edu/idaho-law-review Recommended Citation Hannah E. Birge, et al., Social-Ecological Resilience and Law in the Platte River Basin, 51 Idaho L. Rev. 229 (2019). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uidaho.edu/idaho-law-review/vol51/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ UIdaho Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Idaho Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ UIdaho Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL RESILIENCE AND LAW IN THE PLATTE RIVER BASIN HANNAH E. BIRGE,* CRAIG R ALLEN,** ROBIN KUNDIS CRAIG,*** AHJOND S. GARMESTANI,**** JOSEPH A. HAMM,***** CHRISTINA BABBITT,****** KRISTINE NEMEC,******* AND EDELLA SCHLAGER******** ABSTRACT Efficiency and resistance to rapid change are hallmarks of both the judicial and legislative branches of the United States government. These defining characteristics, while bringing stability and predictability, pose challenges when it comes to managing dynamic natural systems. As our understand- ing of ecosystems improves, we must devise ways to account for the non- linearities and uncertainties rife in complex social-ecological systems. This paper takes an in-depth look at the Platte River basin over time to ex- plore how the system’s resilience—the capacity to absorb disturbance without losing defining structures and functions—responds to human driv- en change. Beginning with pre-European settlement, the paper explores how water laws, policies, and infrastructure influenced the region’s ecolo- gy and society. While much of the post-European development in the Platte River basin came at a high ecological cost to the system, the recent tri-state and federal collaborative Platte River Recovery and Implementa- tion Program is a first step towards flexible and adaptive management of the social-ecological system. Using the Platte River basin as an example, we make the case that inherent flexibility and adaptability are vital for the next iteration of natural resources management policies affecting stressed basins. We argue that this can be accomplished by nesting policy in a re- silience framework, which we describe and attempt to operationalize for use across systems and at different levels of jurisdiction. As our current natural resources policies fail under the weight of looming global change, unprecedented demand for natural resources, and shifting land use, the need for a new generation of adaptive, flexible natural resources govern- ance emerges. Here we offer a prescription for just that, rooted in the so- cial, ecological and political realities of the Platte River basin. * School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68583. ** U.S. Geological Survey, Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68583. *** William H. Leary Professor of Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law; Affil- iated Faculty, Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, and Environment; Associated Faculty, Global Change and Sustainability Center; University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112. **** U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. ***** School of Criminal Justice and Environmental Science and Policy Program, College of So- cial Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824. ****** Blue Earth Consultants, LLC, Oakland, CA 94607. ******* North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory, USDA-ARS, Brookings, SD 57006. ******** School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona, Tuscon, AZ 85721. 2 IDAHO LAW REVIEW [VOL. NN TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................ 2 II. PLATTE RIVER BASIN: ECOSYSTEM CHARACTERISTICS, RESILIENCE, HISTORY AND SERVICES ............................................. 3 A. The Pre-European Platte River Ecosystem and Resilience Theory ........ 3 1. The Physical System ......................................................................... 3 2. Ecosystem Services ........................................................................... 5 B. Platte River Basin Following European Settlement ............................... 5 1. European Settlement and the Homestead Acts ................................. 6 2. Water Law, Policies, and Infrastructure in Support of Economic Development .................................................................. 7 3. Impact of Water Appropriation and Reclamation on Ecosystem Services ......................................................................... 9 4. Resilience and Ecosystem Services ................................................ 11 III. POLICY UNDER UNCERTAINTY: USING LAW TO MANAGE SYSTEM RESILIENCE ........................................................................... 14 A. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) .................................................... 15 B. Responding to Social Disturbances: The Platte River Recovery and Implementation Program (PRRIP) ............................................... 16 1. Triggering Negotiations .................................................................. 16 2. Specifics of the PRRIP: Water and Land ........................................ 17 3. Specifics of the Agreement: Adaptive Management (AM) .............................................................................................. 19 4. Governance and the PRRIP ............................................................. 19 5. PRRIP Conclusion .......................................................................... 21 C. Promoting Resilience Through Policy: Obstacles And Opportunities ...................................................................................... 21 D. Panarchy Theory and Law ................................................................... 22 E. Reducing Uncertainty by Operationalizing Resilience Assessments ........................................................................................ 24 IV. CONCLUSION AND SYNTHESIS ............................................................ 26 A. Building a Governance System that Values Resilience ....................... 26 B. Climate Change and Unknown Futures: The Growing Urgency for Policy Transformation ................................................................... 26 C. Synthesis .............................................................................................. 27 I. INTRODUCTION In today's political climate of congressional gridlock and partisan conflict, re- sistance to rapid change characterizes the judicial and legislative branches of the United States government. Of the two branches, however, courts may have more capacity to be incrementally adaptive, sometimes despite public opinion to the con- trary. Similarly, federal administrative agencies have some level of adaptive capaci- ty through rulemaking, in adjudications including permit conditions, and by exer- cising administrative discretion within their legislative authority. Legislation from Congress, in contrast, is designed to be lasting, stable, and resistant to change, es- 2014] SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL RESILIENCE AND LAW IN THE PLATTE 3 RIVER BASIN tablishing order and bracing society against shocks and rapid changes. From this perspective, environmental statutes must be written to exist for operational perpetu- ity1. However, as our understanding of ecosystems has improved, it has become clear that the current judicial system and natural resources management policies lack the flexibility to address the nonlinearities and uncertainties that we now know to be common in ecosystems2. The efficacy of natural resources management legis- lation is thus limited by an older, more rigid interpretation of ecosystems that fails to address their dynamic nature. Here we present the history, challenges, and opportunities of using law— particularly federal statutes—as tools in the management of the complex social- ecological system of the Platte River basin. We argue that by framing natural re- sources management laws within resilience theory3 there is potential to introduce a new generation of natural resources management policy that better addresses the dynamic and somewhat uncertain nature of ecological systems. II. PLATTE RIVER BASIN: ECOSYSTEM CHARACTERISTICS, RESILIENCE, HISTORY AND SERVICES A. The Pre-European Platte River Ecosystem and Resilience Theory 1. The Physical System The Platte River basin extends from Colorado and Wyoming, where snow- pack melt runoff from the eastern side of the continental divide flows into the South and North Forks of the Platte River, to Nebraska, where the two forks join to form the main stem of the Platte, which is also supported by smaller tributaries and the Ogallala Aquifer4. The Platte River’s South and North forks run 424 and 618 miles long respectively, combining for 310 miles in the main stem to deliver an 1. See William Howard Taft, The Boundaries between the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial Branches of the Government, 25 THE YALE L. J. 599, 600–01 (1916) (providing a specific distinc- tion among the branches of the US government and defining the legislative branch). 2. See generally STANFORD ENVTL. LAW SOC’Y, THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT (2001) (for an in depth explanation of how the